No I haven't tried Arduino.
The script above worked when using it on my other ten year old laptop that ubuntu 10 installed on it and a serial port.
Now I have a new laptop with ubuntu 12 installed, and a laptop that only has USB ports. I would really like to get this programme going. I think it's a permission thing. When testing the ports my RS232 adapter does get identified. It's just when I run the script I get the baudrate message. Any ideas??

Does it work correctly if run from a root login and fail when run from a regular login? If so, it's a permission issue. What do you get if you plug in your usb device and run the lsusb shell command as root and as a regular login?

I'm not a linux guru, but I did resolve permission issues with installing SANE drivers for a Kodak 5250 AIO printer/scanner with a USB interface. The fix involved creating and assigning myself to a group, in my case "scanner"(step 6) and creating a new rule in the /etc/udev/rules.d/ directory(step 7).

Thanks to all for your efforts in the development of the CUPS driver/S+ANE backend for Kodak Aio printers!
I had previously successfully installed the CUPS driver and would now +like to document my experience installing the SANE backend for Kodak +Aio for an ESP 5250 printer.
I run Ubuntu 10.10 on an old IBM Thinkpad laptop and I am a user rath+er than a developer. This process took about 8 +/- hours of reading r+elease notes, readme files, man pages, and forum posts and a good bit+ of trial and error. Here's what finally worked for me:
1. From sourceforge.net/projects/cupsdriverkodak/files/scanning-saneba+ckend Downloaded kodakaio-02.4.tar.gz Extracted to /home/kodak direct+ory
2. Installed 3 of the recommended packages. libusb-dev was already ins+talled on my system. sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev sudo apt-get i+nstall libcupsimage2-dev sudo apt-get install libcupsdriver1-dev
3. Followed Release Notes instructions: cd kodakaio-02.4 cd sane-backe+nds-kodakaio-02.4 ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --local+statedir=/var BACKENDS=kodakaio make sudo make install
4. Edited the file /etc/sane.d/kodakaio.conf # net autodiscovery (I do+n't use wifi with this printer) usb 0x040a 0x4041 (ESP 5250 usb codes+) scanimage -L still did not see the scanner
5. Edited the file /etc/sane.d/dll.conf kodakaio scanimage -L now sees+ the scanner as root only (Note: The Release Notes seem to be in erro+r here, referencing kodakaio.conf instead of dll.conf. As corrected, +steps 4 and 5 should be reversed to match the Release Notes.)
6. Created a scanner group using system->Administration->Users and Gro+ups and added myself to this group.
7. Created /etc/udev/rules.d/90-libsane.rules LABEL="libsane_usb_rules+_begin" # Kodak ESP 5250 ATTRS{idVendor}=="040a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="+4041", MODE="0664", GROUP="scanner", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes" LABEL+="libsane_usb_rules_end"
8. scanimage -L now sees the scanner as myself(and root)
scanimage > mytestscanfile Simple Scan XSane Image Scanning Program Ar+e all working under Ubuntu 10.10
I hope this summary helps someone save a few hours of research.